


Where you should be.

by damedeleslac



Series: We're all a little bit crazy - verse [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Estrangement, Long-Distance Relationship, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 21:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2323145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damedeleslac/pseuds/damedeleslac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha stays away to keep them safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where you should be.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer - not mine, honestly

 

 

:::

 

It's not easy.

It doesn't get easier.

But she does get used to it.

The times and the places where Clint ( _Bobby Jean_ ) and Darcy ( _Glory Be_ ) should be, but aren't anymore.

Tasha ( _Ladybird_ ) hates that she gets used to it.

It's not that she worries about them. Clint knows how to keep Darcy safe, and Darcy would burn down the world to get to the people, who would hurt Clint (probably with a certain billionaire and alien prince following her charge). But her face is the face of SHIELD's secrets exposed and everybody knows it.

And as bad as the SHIELD enforced absences had been (despite the familiar voice that had been in her ear and Clint's regular presence), this self imposed estrangement is worse.

There are times when she almost aches to see them, to hear them, to touch them.

But she stays away.

To keep them safe.

 

:::

 

They're lucky they don't live closer to their neighbours when they start yelling at each other.

Clint (Walt, here) hasn't spent this much time in one place, especially a small town, without a target in sight or a exit plan, since he was a kid.

And Darcy (Della, as far as anyone knows), has never spent so much time with Clint (Walt), without Tasha, since they started whatever their thing is. (She's never been unable to contact her family for so long either.)

They know why Tasha has to stay away, why they can't go to be with her.

But it doesn't stop them from yelling and screaming at each other, until someone throws something and the other slams a door, storming off.

 

:::

 

The photos are probably the worst of it.

With a face now so recognisable as hers, everybody and their dog seems to think they have a photo with the Black Widow in it.

Tasha and Clint had done their best to avoid cameras when at work and especially when they were with Darcy, but there'd only been so much either had been able to do. And only luck (or possibly Jarvis) has kept Clint or Darcy from being recognised in the photos that get passed around the magazines and talk shows.

But luck (and even Jarvis) can only do so much. And the shock of seeing a particular photo (from a box in someone's grandmother's attic), makes her retreat (tactically) back to the Stark Tower apartment Tony keeps insisting is hers.

Tasha locks the doors and sharpens all of her knives and cleans all of her guns until she has to sit on her hands to stop herself from running to Clint and Darcy.

 

:::

 

Darcy (Della) refuses to leave the house for a week.

She re-arranges everything twice, paints the spare bedroom Tasha's favourite shade of red and stays up for nearly 48 hours to wreck cyber-havoc on the people who thought it was acceptable for that photo to see daylight.

Clint (Walt) breaks bones in both his hands and never does come up with a reason the staff at the local hospital ever believes.

And if the Sheriff has any suspicions; after five people walk (limp) into the station, to turn themselves in for crimes he didn't know were being committed, he never says anything.

 

:::

 

Tony is smart enough to not ask about Clint.

Instead he throws a team of lawyers at the magazines and talk shows, the Senate hearings and the federal agencies, that use the word _talk_ as code for throwing Tasha into the deepest, darkest prison cell they have and melting the key down.

Mostly, he causes distractions.

They're too closely linked for his antics to truly shift the focus away, but she appreciates the effort.

Especially when Tony proposes to Pepper, while out to dinner with her and Bruce; in full view of several cameras, and then kisses the poor doctor to celebrate Pepper saying yes.

Even more when it gives her nearly two weeks of (relative) peace.

 

:::

 

 


End file.
